Senior Administrator, Birmingham Energy Innovation Centre (University of Birmingham) – Birmingham.

Location

SALARY

£23,406-25,143 p/a

CLOSING DATE

16th March 2021

Job Summary.

MICRA partner the University of Birmingham seek a Senior Administrator to work at the Tyseley base of the Birmingham Energy Innovation Centre (BEIC) on a fixed term basis for 24 months. 

The Birmingham Energy Innovation Centre (BEIC) is a purpose-built Centre enabling production scale research and experimentation to deliver high quality research innovation for academic and partner/industrial benefit.

Reporting to the College Director of Operations, the post holder will provide comprehensive administrative support to the range of activities across the Centre, including establishing and maintaining appropriate administrative processes in accordance with the centre’s ISO 9001 accreditation. Acting as a focal point of contact, s/he will interact with individuals internal and external to the Centre (in particular with Industrial Partners) at all levels.

The post holder will also provide comprehensive secretarial and clerical support to the research staff.

Main Duties.

The post holder will provide a high level of secretarial and clerical support to the BEIC Research Staff including:

• Proactively manage diaries, prioritising and allocating time for meetings and appointments using own discretion and judgement. Information regarding commitments should be kept up to date and communicated to others as appropriate, thinking ahead to anticipate problems.
• Use own judgement to assess incoming communications, determining what should be actioned by the post holder or other staff without reference to the leadership team and ensuring that the remaining correspondence is prioritised and divided into action and information categories, following up as appropriate.
• To manage all travel arrangements for both UK and overseas visits. This will include researching and producing travel options and itineraries in conjunction with existing commitments, ensuring value in terms of time and cost and involve liaison with University travel.
• Carry out confidential work on behalf of the BEIC leadership team including coordination of recruitment activities.
• Responsibility for the coordination and recording of minutes.
• Coordination with representatives of the Centre’s academic leads in meetings ensuring prompt action closure and feedback to the relevant parties
• Leadership of the centre’s environmental policy
• Coordination of first aid provision, support and training
• DSE and ergonomic assessment of all individuals and roles in the centre.
• Organisation of a monthly centre-wide “Town Hall” event

Person Specification.

Good general education, GCSE, ‘A’ level or equivalent professional experience.

Skills and experience

  • Significant previous experience in an Office Administration role
  • Excellent communication skills and ability to communicate with a wide range of people by telephone, in writing and in person
  • Excellent IT skills, especially use of Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint
  • Confident and willing to quickly learn new software packages
  • Excellent attention to detail
  • Flexibility to take on a wide variety of tasks as necessary
  • Ability to manage own workload and keep to deadlines, prioritising tasks and dealing with competing demands
  • Ability to work unsupervised
  • Ideally experience of working within a similar environment, i.e. Higher Education or Manufacturing in a sensitive/secure, ISO 9001 compliant organisation.

Dimensions

The Centre’s research funding is set to grow through further engagement across the College and External Companies. The addition of research projects via the Leadership team is fundamentally underpinned by the post holder’s interaction with prospective partners, at all levels of their businesses and Directors of other organisations.

The post holder will not have any direct reports but will be the only dedicated administrative support for BEIC. As a main point of contact, they will deal with a wide range of correspondence on behalf of the Centre, developing the tone of communications and ensuring a consistent approach. The post holder will need to ;
• Constantly reassess and refine the administration requirements to meet the changing needs of the Centre, in particular as it adapts to a significant increase in scope.
• Providing a full range of PA support to the industrial and academic individuals who make up the Centre leadership team, the post holder will have access to sensitive and confidential information on a frequent basis and be expected to exercise judgement when prioritising tasks and engagements on their behalf.

The individual will build relationships internally and externally to the Centre and the University but will also be expected to work closely with research staff employed at collaborators and a range of external organisations. In order to successfully undertake this, and maximise their impact, s/he will need to develop an awareness of the structure and activity of the Centre.

The role will have budgetary responsibility for travel, equipment, catering, stationery and events. Although the final decision on major purchases will be made elsewhere, the individual will research, cost and instigate smaller purchases.

Planning and organising

The role holder is expected to work largely on his/her own and plan their workload with minimal supervision. Close liaison will be required with the Centre leadership team to keep aware of their changing priorities and demands. The nature of the job and the ongoing development of BEIC mean s/he will need to work flexibly to easily be able to adapt to change whilst continuing to deliver. As the centre, and demands upon the leadership team will grow this requirement upon the role holder will increase in complexity and time sensitive nature.
The post holder will need to utilise their judgement and discretion when dealing with correspondence and managing diaries on behalf of the leadership team and when organising events on behalf of the Centre.
A major aspect of the role will be the development of administration processes for the Centre. The individual will be responsible for ensuring these are reviewed on regular basis to remain effective and compliant with Centre and University policy, procedure (including ISO 9001 compliance) and legislation.

Problem solving and decision making

Without reference to others:

• Designing and maintaining administrative management systems to support the work of the Centre
• Structuring own workload in order to meet expectations and deadlines
• Actively proposing solutions , best use of time, and promoting effectiveness in all matters
• Act as a best practice example within the Centre promoting effectiveness and positive change
• Responding to internal and external enquiries
• Producing and redirecting correspondence
• Arranging meetings
• Making suggestions for improvements to processes and systems

After consulting others:

• Handling extraordinary communications
• Final arrangements for events
• Purchasing equipment
• Issuing of access cards
• Ensuring required provision of first cover

That would be referred to someone else:

• Confidential or complex enquiries or escalated queries
• Commenting to an external party on the performance or results of a project being undertaken within the Centre.

Informal enquires to Antony Jones – [email protected]

Further Information and to Apply

Visit the University of Birmingham website.

Make An Enquiry.